Star War: Journey of star wars movie series
movies and tv series
"Origin of Star Wars and its journey to become a billion-dollar franchise has been an epic journey. As it wasn’t a smooth sailing from the beginning and the new direction it took after the change in ownership has been a highlight of the cinematic universe. Here’s how that legendary saga became what it is today."
If you ask any geek to name the best sci-fi movie of all time, Star Wars will come out on top most definitely. The original Star Wars trilogy is considered an all-time classic by many movie enthusiasts. Achieving an impressive 8.7 rating in IMDb rating for a trilogy that came out in the early ’80s states how much it has attracted the hearts of its audience.
Even though today Star Wars is a billion-dollar franchise owned by Disney Studios, the dawn of star wars was not so bright. The idea of Star Wars was born inside the head of George Lucas. Lucas already understood the risk of making this type of ambitious franchise into a reality with a narrow-minded audience and lack of technology available in the 1970s.
Lucas prepared a 12-page treatment of Star Wars and brought that idea to various movie studios. Each one of them turned it down including Universal Studios and United Artists. But when he brought the document to 20th Century fox they saw the potential in Lucas’ concept and asked him to prepare a proper script.
Even though Lucas’ initial idea was to create a low budget movie, Lucas prepared the script in 1976 and estimated the budget as $18 million for the movie. Fox offered him $7,5 million and with some bank loans and borrowed money from friends, Lucas was able to complete filming for Star Wars A New Hope for $11 million. Until now Star Wars is considered the most expensive low budget Sci-Fi movie of all time. In an era where advanced VFX isn’t available, Lucas managed to shoot the special effects of the movie with some well-thought creativity.
The movie was a massive success. People were lined in ques to watch this brand new movie with a whole new concept of space. The movie made $518 million worldwide in its original release making Lucas more and more intrigued about carry on with a franchise. The rest is history. Star Wars A New Hope (1976) marked the beginning of a franchise that would stay forever in the hearts of its fans.
People lining up for the premier of Star Wars (Image Courtesy of Photofest)
“The reason I'm making Star Wars is that I want to give young people some sort of faraway exotic environment for their imaginations to run around in,” he said in an interview.
“I have a strong feeling about interesting kids in space exploration. I want them to want it. I want them to get beyond the basic stupidities of the moment and think about colonizing Venus and Mars. And the only way it's going to happen is to have some dumb kid fantasize about it — to get his ray gun, jump in his ship and run off with this Wookie into outer space. It's our only hope in a way."
After the mammoth success of the original trilogy, George Lucas and his Lucas Films production company laid out plans for a prequel trilogy for the star wars saga. From 1995 to 2005 they produced a prequel trilogy in order to give a proper introduction to its characters. Although it wasn’t a fan favorite as the original trilogy, it also made billions of dollars worldwide making star wars one of the most profitable franchises in the world during that period.
Director/writer George Lucas
Everything was going smoothly for Star Wars and there were rumors about a possible sequel trilogy for the Saga. But to the shock of everyone, George Lucas decided to sell the Lucas films with all the rights to Star Wars and its characters to Disney. Lucas said he has dedicated more than 3 decades of his life to Star Wars and he wants to spend the rest of his life with his family as he had welcomed a newborn daughter to his family.
“In 2012 I was 69. So the question was am I going to keep doing this the rest of my life? Do I want to go through this again? Finally, I decided I'd rather raise my daughter and enjoy life for a while.”- George Lucas
That was the turning point in the Star Wars Saga since there was a clear difference in the narrative Star Wars was taken in the Disney era. Many of the critics say that the sequel trilogy produced by Disney was trying to focus on a female-centered storyline as the helm of Lucas Films fell upon Kathleen Kennedy. As a result of those latest Star Wars movies released by Disney haven’t got the familiar welcome of its fanbase.
But many positive factors happened during the Disney era. Due to the unstoppable financial backing of Disney, Star Wars has released three main feature movies, 1 spin-off movie, a fan favorite tv series The Mandalorian on Disney + and many other ambitious series are on the drawing board including Kenobi.
If you are completely new to Star Wars and haven't been spoiled about the story, I would suggest that you start the franchise in the released order, not in chronological order. You might wonder why should someone start the franchise by episode IV rather than episode I. But as you watch along you will understand that there are some amusing plot twists included in the story. I wouldn’t go into details about each movie here since it might spoil the fun of watching it by yourself. But I can guarantee that Star Wars is a franchise that you wouldn’t wanna miss out on.
Either way, Star Wars will welcome you to a whole new universe while it tells a story that happens in a galaxy far far away. Hyperdrive will take you to places you can’t imagine. Force will show you the power of a well-controlled mind. It will teach you that anger and power can turn the most innocent of souls into a mass-murdering dictator.
May the Force be with you.
Contributed by: Gayan Prasad
